Monsters Are Made, Not Born
by Aimlessly Unknown
Summary: Dean Winchester is tougher than he looks. In Hell, though, it just isn't enough. Dean-centric.


_Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster._

* * *

_Please, no_, he begs as his body is stretched across the rack.

* * *

They start with his skin, stripping him down to his muscles and bones. He screams with the agony of it, wordless cries escaping his exposed lips. At first he cannot make heads or tails of who is touching him, they all look the same down here. Faceless.

Even he feels faceless sometimes.

(And, sometimes, he is.)

* * *

He's been there for he doesn't know how long when he meets Alistair for the first time. Alistair takes him apart slowly, caustically. Alistair burns away his eyes and breaks his feet. Presses so tightly on his joints that they fall out of place and then rips them so they cannot go back in. Takes care to twist his veins under his skin until they are all running to his heart; then Alistair waits for it to give out; for blood to force its way through his skin and his eyes to go blank with Death.

Once he comes back, Alistair asks for the first time.

"Would you like to get off of the rack?"

But he knows what will happen if he says yes, what he will be made to do. What he will be made _into_. So he spits out _no_ as harshly as he can.

Alistair merely smiles.

* * *

His name is Dean. It's very important that he remember that, he tells himself. It will keep him sane. He is Dean. Dean Winchester. He is Sam's big brother. He will protect Sammy. That is his job. He is Dean Winchester and he will do his job.

Alistair is his regular now. The one that comes to him most and breaks his spine in two, bending him backwards until he does not know which way is up.

He is Dean Winchester, he tells himself.

Alistair burns out his heart and squeezes his lungs, tells him that he is a failure of a brother with the knowledge that he cannot respond.

He is Dean Winchester, he says and he stays strong with that thought.

Alistair sews his mouth open and splits his tongue. Alistair jams a blade into his ears and tells him that Sam misses him only when he cannot hear. Alistair slits his throat and forces a hand into his vocal chords, makes his voice dance.

He is Dean Winchester, he sobs brokenly unable to recall why that mattered at all.

* * *

It takes them a while to get to his bones. First they sift through his muscles, tearing them apart and sewing them back wrong. He is disfigured when they reach his bones; arm muscles across his back and cheeks stretched too far over his stomach – clenching and bleeding over themselves. They take their sweet time with his bones.

Break his spine to chunks and pull his nerves apart. The spasms are normal, they say. So is the screaming. He does not understand much anymore – not joy or taste or the smell of a warm summer's day – but he understands pain. He understands agony and shame and the foul stench of demon breath as it breezes over him.

He understands that he wants it to stop.

Even so, when Alistair comes to ask, the word _no _is still behind his chipped and broken teeth.

* * *

Alistair does not look evil from down here, he thinks hazily as they sew his mouth shut. He looks almost kind - gentle eyed and fond smile on the face that isn't a face. Things are different down here, humans are demons and demons are unthinkably strange. A face like a black hole, like the ocean, shifting and changing and sometimes Alistair looks a lot like Bob Dylan. Some days he looks like Mick Jagger.

Some days he looks like Sammy.

* * *

Nothing has been the same since the hellhounds came; in fact he's sure that things have changed. There is a straining, aching, perpetual pain in his body that he cannot ignore. It was there too, in the Upperworld. His mouth gushes with blood as he recounts this to Alistair. Alistair who simply smiles and tears his limbs from him. But he is so far gone that he does not feel it - even when hands that are not hands reach in and begin systematically breaking his ribs.

"Do you want to get off of the rack, Dean?"

Dean spits out _no_ through the blood but has forgotten why it is so important that he say it. It is the only word he knows now; it circles in his brain and becomes him. He has no name, he is nothing. He is _no no no no no no _and there is no meaning behind it anymore. It is a broken record (AC/DC – The Sex Pistols – not records, cassettes – _best of mullet rock _– shut your cakehole – memories – _NO_) in his head.

_No_, he repeats and this time Alistair does not smile.

It feels almost like a victory, if only he could recall what that was anymore.

* * *

"Why do you fight it so hard?"

A voice in the back of his head whispers _Sammy_.

(Who is Sammy?)

"Why do you resist when it would save you pain? Who are you that you would endure this for the sake of the unknown?"

The same voice says _Dean_.

(Who is Dean?)

* * *

_Please_, they beg as he stretches them across the rack.

* * *

_And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you._

Friedrich Nietzche


End file.
